Santa Monica Man Arrested After Assaulting Girlfriend Who Tried To Flee In Car

Wednesday, 10 Jul 2013, 9:02:00 AM

Tim Broughton

A Santa Monica man was arrested Friday, June 28 after assaulting his girlfriend while she was trying to escape from him in their car.

At 6:07 am, officers of the Santa Monica Police Department went to the 1000 block of 14th Street after they had been informed that a domestic violence incident had happened there.

When the officers arrived they spoke with the victim.

This woman told the officers that she had been cohabiting with her boyfriend for several years and on that day that had been involved in an argument.

The topic of the argument was a set of keys, namely the keys to their car.

What had happened was the girlfriend had attempted to enter the car in order to retrieve some of her belongings, and also in order to get away from her boyfriend who was in a state of anger at that time.

The girlfriend was inside the vehicle but the boyfriend was stopping her from closing the door by holding it open.

The girlfriend, after some effort, managed to get the door closed when the boyfriend suddenly reached into the car through an open window and slapped the girlfriend in her head with his open hand.

The officers had enough evidence to arrest the boyfriend, aged 30, and a resident of Santa Monica, and he was charged with spousal battery.

Bail was set at $20,000.

Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website,smmirror.com.